Its Autumn: Lets Work Out!
The weather has continued to be cool in the mornings and evenings for the past couple of days; if you made an excuse saying, Because of the hot weather, its hard to exercise, now your excuse has gone.
Take out your running shoes--jogging around your apartment complex will do. If you find running burdensome, fast walking is fine, too. Swimming is also good exercise. In short, what matters is how sincerely you work out, not which exercise you do. Longing to lose weight, beginners tend to begin with very challenging goals. But, it is smart to start with easy goals and to raise the intensity gradually. Here we have prepared some important information on the right ways to work out:
▽Dont be obsessed with frequency--Being mindful of exercising is good. But the obsessive idea that you need two or three hours of daily working out to be successful is very difficult to live up to.
If you work out over three times a week, the efficiency will increase. Gym experts recommend that people work out 50 minutes at a time, three or more times a week. You should detach from frequency, and follow the routines: stretching (10 minutes), aerobic workwout (15-20 minutes), muscle-building workout (15-20 min), and warm up (5 min).
Some people gain weight instead of losing it after starting an exercise routine. Some of the coaches at sports clubs would say, It is the result of your increased muscle amount, so dont worry about that. Soon youll lose weight. However, this comment is incorrect.
If you work out well, naturally you lose weight owing to your increased amounts of energy consumption. The real reason for weight gain lies in either failing to control your food intake or not working out hard enough.
▽Women should work out building their muscular strength--Females usually spend their most workout time on treadmills. This scene is found at most sports clubs. They are afraid of getting wider shoulders or biceps, so they do not do weight training.
It is true that women get biceps if they do weight training. But, they do not get bumpy biceps, due to the impact of female estrogen hormone. Rather it helps women fight the flab and puts them in a good shape. It generally takes three to four weeks to witness the changes in your body.
Especially, women who have entered middle age should intensify their workout for muscular strength, as their bodies secrete less male testosterone hormone, and their muscles start to get weaker.
Regardless of gender, it is not verified that weight training will make you have wider shoulders. It creates a visual effect of making men look like they have wider shoulders after they have developed thick muscles around their shoulders.
▽ Swimming is not helpful for weight loss?--People believe that exercise that makes you sweat a lot is the most effective workout. In some degree, this is true.
In general, the workout that makes you sweat more burns more calories. But, each individual sweats differently, so the idea that a certain amount of sweat will lose a certain number of pounds is not true. People also sweat while swimming. But, they become unconscious of their sweating, simply because their body temperatures are lower than the waters.
If you swim steadily and get used to the water, the workout efficiency tends to decrease. As it gets comfortable swimming, the calorie-burning level lowers to the level of slow walking. Therefore, intensive swimming such as racing with friends or challenging records will help people to lose weight.
(Reference aides = Prof. Park Won-ha, at sports medical team, Seoul Samsung Hospital, Oh Gyeong-taek, general manager at Seoul Cosmo Sportsville)
TK Sohn sohn@donga.com
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